FIve POEMS

Once you were pregnant with the thought of her:the warmth of the sun on your arms was her,the pulse of a bird before your eyes was her.

And one day she appeared, where she was not before.A bright seed; then suddenly, limbs, head, heart,for life itself was curious to know who she would be.

Birth gave her to your arms, your eyes.Light and air were mild. All of those who loveunderstand the way time moves in a daze of love.

But how her hands urged her to hold! Her legs, to run!Language flew into her ear and she could speak!Sun and wind were her friends. So you held her in her sleep.

And you held her small body when she stumbled into night:for days the black river went plunging into night.But in the place you’ve come to, there is only care.

She has woken, your love, in the house of your heart.Oh, now she is laughing, saying Look! Ma! Pa!I’m a bird – I’m sunlight – I am everywhere you are.

(published in Island magazine, issue 14, 2016)

from Control

To see, as the astronaut does,the body of the earthlying whole and resplendentin its swathes and veils; to holdthe oceans and the forests in your gaze,measuring their hue,meaning density and depth,here jotting in a whale, and here a bear;to imagine the pathscurrents forge around the earth,persuasions exerted by cold on warm water,and the similar antipathiesof saline and fresh;to picture the magnetic fields surrounding the earthas so many arrows in a flower of arcs;the troposphere and stratospherelike a child’s drawing of the sky in broad bands,horizontal strokes for stratospheric windsand swirly ones for tropospheric weather;all things on earth accounted forand all in their place;but no sooner is the picture drawnthan the child wondershow to change it.

Out of the meeting and back to the leaf.It had no dream of losing steerage of itself –

but was one dayrelinquished by the tree.

(published in Aftermarks, Vagabond Press, 2012)

"The Chords of Snow Melting..."

The chords of snow melting are unheard, perhaps, by any but the bird,attuned with all its body

to the sawings of a grass blade, or a seed falling from its flower head,meaning danger, or future,

or the wind slowly gathering in force.But see the snow -- how in melting, it clarifies.

A pitch, low or high, must be sung by water molecules uncouplingsmall attractions, gaining force and mutual distance.

Restless one, I know.The songs we're singing are as clear.

(published in Event, 2007)

Desert Wind

High, bright winter’s morning: the tenements’ tree-antlersclatter on each corner and the stepping black spines are smoothand glossy as mirages; framed, the scene shines as if transported to a desert, and never (since this winter day will not end hereafter, having leftthe field of time) will the treesflicker leaves again or carry broods of flowers; but still, as in a desert,a random bird alights, hoarse-throated after days of luckless questingfor a moth or a spider that has cellared spring rains in its body, so honeyingthe juices of itself; and when startled by a boy skating down the lane a moment,she is swallowed by the wind, as a rasping draws nearer on the dirt and turns articulate,becomes the shuck, shuck of a snake tasting engine oil and frost, as if astonishedhow far it has gone across terrains, when last it knew, an iridescencemeant the felled wing of a hummingbird, and thus the sweetestmeat, but never such a black stench as pools below this metal corpse...High, bright winter’s morning: the desert wind whistling from the north,radio static from the kitchen clarifying to the small maracas rattle of the sand,briefly clambering with every wave of air: go, stop; go, stop; and then, a long silence—(as if entire days have held their breath). Now comes a human voice: low, soft,perhaps yours, rising like the yam tendril, which knows how to bind whatever’s still,and for long enough to touch.